How to Recreate the Tape Flanging Effect like the Small Faces - YouTube

Thinking Inside the Box on YouTube.

Tape Flanging on YouTube.

Hi, welcome to an episode of “Thinking Inside the Box” on Noah’s Ark. In the video, we’re going to talk about how to recreate Tape Flange, a creative effect that was first famously used by engineer Glyn Johns on the song “Itchycoo Park” by the Small Faces in 1967.

Let’s start first with a little bit of history. Glyn Johns started working as a producer and engineer in the late sixties at the renowned Olympic Studios in London. His discography includes such famous acts as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and the Who amongst others.

So how was this effect created in the first place with analog equipment? Well, one had to make use of three two-track tape machines, two of them with identical copies of the mix and one additional to record the output of the effect. The trick was to apply pressure with a finger on the second machine’s reel in order to alter the speed of the reel and sum the signal with the original mix of the first machine.

Although this effect is often called Tape Flanging, the correct terminology is in fact Tape Phasing because all it really is, is just two waveforms subtlely cancelling each other out.

To find out more about the tape flanging effect, you can watch the video above or on YouTube here.